Saturday, 22 January 2011

Schools – Not Places Where Anyone Ever Learns Anything…

Stunned children at St Mary's RC, Bacup, Lancashire, were shown footage of the Blitz and were told that London - where some of them have relatives - was under bomb attack.

Teachers then led them to a cellar when an air raid siren sounded and a firework was let off to simulate a bomb.

*sigh* I’m getting that déjà vu feeling again….

The school project aimed to help children empathise with what it is like to live during wartime by making them believe that war had been declared.

Because that’s what it’s all about now – not who, when, where, why, but ‘how did they feel?’…

Headteacher Mike Richards announced in the morning assembly that Britain was at war, but abandoned the project at around 1.30pm after some of the children became upset.

He said some of the pupils had since had nightmares.

Youngsters were also warned about evacuation.

Oh, FFS!

Mr Richards admitted teachers were 'very upset' that pupils had been left distressed and suffering from nightmares.

Clearly, it isn’t the children who need to learn to empathise…

Mr Richards explained: 'We were doing World War Two as a topic and we saw advice from schools that basically suggested that we introduced the topic as if it was really happening. We didn't foresee these problems.'

7 comments:

Engineer
said...

I learned much about WW2 from my parents and grandparents, who lived through it. Why not ask some older folks to come into school and talk about their memories? Hearing it first hand is always more instructive than the sort of 'playschool pretend' described, and local memories, being closer to home, far more compelling. The local British Legion would probably be delighted to assist, provided they didn't get bogged down in CRB nonsense. Or is organising something like that out of the question in 'modern' education?

The parents should report the teachers to the police for what amounts to pretty severe psychological abuse. What's the section 5 charge.. 'behaviour likely to cause alarm or distress'. Open and shut case.

They wanted to introduce the kids to what the second world war was like, but the educationalists have, as usual, shown them how the Nazis would have worked here if they had won. You know... thought control, propaganda, 'correct' thinking and so on.